Siege and Seizure in Korea

Traveling around the
world these past months has given me an education about
American history that majoring in the subject at UCLA never
did. I have witnessed first hand what US imperialism and
militarism can do to countries and societies. I sat with
indigenous Hawaiian tribal leaders who shared their tragic
stories of how US colonialism and militarism ruined their
fishing waters and turned their lands into super-fund sites.
I stood in solidarity with Irish peace activists who want
the US military off their soil and want US transport and
rendition planes to stop using Shannon Airport to land for
refueling. These are just a few stories. Everywhere I go,
the local populations have stories of greed, crime,
corruption, pollution, etc., that all go hand in glove
wherever the US military is present. Not to mention the
"hot" war zones, where hundreds of civilians are murdered,
maimed or displaced on a daily basis.

This rampant,
arrogant, and care-less US militarism has nowhere been more
evident than here in South Korea, especially in the village
of Daechuri, near Pyong-taek City. The loathing for George
Bush, America, Americans, irresponsible capitalism,
corporatism, imperialism and militarism is a planetary
phenomenon, but apart from what the US is doing to the
wretched countries of Iraq and Afghanistan, I have never
been more ashamed of the US government than when I visited
the village of Daechuri with 17 other American peace and
social-justice activists and a campesino from Colombia.

Miles before our bus reached the village on the evening of
November 20th, we were stopped by approximately 200 South
Korean riot police, who were decked out in their full riot
regalia with bullet-proof shields. We were traveling with
Father Moon, an elderly Buddhist priest who has been an
advocate for the villagers for a few years now. Father Moon
got out of the bus and negotiated with the police captain
for what seemed hours in the near-freezing cold, but was
actually only about 20 minutes. Finally, in what the
villagers said was an unprecedented move, they allowed us
entry into the village (after we passed another heavily
guarded checkpoint). Villagers must present IDs to get into
their own village, and visitors are rarely allowed to go in.
Why? Because the village of Daechuri is under siege, in a
criminal collaboration between the governments of South
Korea and the United States of America, and the governments
don't want the world to see what their crimes are doing to
yet more innocent civilians.

The village of Daechuri
has the unmitigated gall to be located next to a US military
base, Camp Humphreys, which is slated for an eleven-billion
dollar expansion that would include a golf course for the
use of soldiers stationed there. The only problem is (not
for the governments) that the village of Daechuri and their
thousands of acres of farmland, mostly rice paddies, are in
the way of the juggernaut of US military expansion. The
people of Daechuri have been cut off from their farmlands by
razor wire, guard towers, and armed foot patrols. Over
two-thirds of the residents have the small village, but that
leaves about one-third of them there to stand against the
mightiest Army and the greediest government in world
history.

In the '80s, Ronald Reagan famously said,
regarding the Berlin Wall, "Tear it down!" There are many
more walls on Earth that separate people from their
farmlands, families, jobs and country that need to be torn
down, but so-called civilized nations are building more
walls and fortifications to contain and control free human
movement and expression and curb populations that are just
trying to live their lives in the traditional ways that they
always have.

After our tour bus pulled up into the
village, we were ushered into a large warehouse, where the
villagers were holding their 811th nightly candlelight vigil
in protest of the US incursion. We joined their vigil and
heard their stories. We heard stories of May 4th, when
20,000 Korean police descended on the village with heavy
hands and strong-arm tactics that allowed the barbed wire
fences to be constructed, thereby effectively cutting the
farmers off from tens of thousands of dollars worth of
unharvested rice. We heard stories, from village elders who
lived through Japanese imperialism and occupation to the US
Korean police action that killed 2.5 million Koreans, who
are now having their lands and ways of life robbed from them
by "Pax Americana." My heart broke for the people of
Daechuri and was filled with disgust for those whom the
people of Korea call "Georgie Bushie" and whom I call
"BushCo."

Daechuri has become "ground zero" in the
struggle against violent US military extremism. We Americans
can no longer sit idly by and turn ignorant blind eyes to
what Georgie Bushie does around the globe. The people of
such places as Daechuri, Shannon, Pearl Harbor and Iraq are
our brothers and sisters whom we are allowing our
governments to oppress and suppress.

In all my life, I
have never witnessed such courage, strength and
determination. 150 people are standing firm and will not be
moved no matter how many acres of their familial land are
seized, how many of their homes are bulldozed, or how close
the razor wire gets to their homes. They have decorated
every fence with bright and cheery paintings of hope for the
future and they have erected monuments and memorials to what
they have already lost. Their determination and courage
should be inspiration to all people around the world who
also struggle for basic human rights.

This week, 18
Americans chose to give up their family holiday celebrations
to come to Korea to stand with the people of Daechuri and
the Korean peace movement.

On the day after
Thanksgiving, when most Americans were watching football,
trampling each other in Wal-Mart in a frantic feeding frenzy
to get the newest cheap toys that are made off of the backs
of virtual slave labor all over the world and/or spending
most of the day circling parking lots at malls across the
country to find a coveted parking space, four women from our
delegation - me, Medea Benjamin (founder of Global Exchange
and Code Pink), my sister, Dede Miller (co-founder of GSFP)
and my assistant, Tiffany Burns - walked across about 2
acres (up to our armpits) of ruined rice crops toward the
"dmz" between the village and Camp Humphreys to hang a sign
that said: "Farms Not Arms" on the nasty looking razor wire,
despite the warnings of the Korean guards who were waving
their arms and screaming something at us from behind two
rows of the barbed wire.

The people of Daechuri have
very little to be thankful for. Our soldiers in the field
and innocent people in Bush-torn countries have very little
to be thankful for. For me, on the third Thanksgiving I have
had to bear since Casey was killed, I can't think of
anything else that I would rather have done than help the
people of Daechuri struggle against the very same thing that
took Casey's life. The villagers honored us with a " Gold
Star Families for Peace/Code Pink" Peace House that had been
abandoned by an owner who took the cash settlement to leave.
The villagers who remain don't want the government's blood
money; they just want to keep their lands and homes.

The villagers who walk the narrow streets of Daechuri, bowed
by lifetimes of carrying heavy burdens and children on their
backs, are now carrying burdens placed there by American
imperial gluttony, and I, as an American, want to help them
carry this burden, as many kind people all over the world
have tried to help me carry mine.

Not only is the
expansion of Camp Humphreys hurting the people of Daechuri,
but it will have the effect of further destabilizing a
region already on pins and needles due partially to US
intervention. You can bet your turkey leftovers that North
Korea is watching these developments very closely and only
the people of Korea and this region will pay for US
infiltrations in South Korea. I know I don't feel any safer
after the raping and pillaging of Daechuri - in fact, the
expansion of Camp Humphreys will only do what Georgie Bushie
is becoming infamous for: making America and the world less
safe and secure. As an aside: I took a straw poll of about
400 South Koreans, and 100% of them said that Georgie Bushie
is far more frightening than Kim Jong-Il and they want the
US out of Korea so they can put their divided country back
together again.

With the complete destruction of
Daechuri scheduled by the end of this year, our efforts may
be too little, too late, for the ill-fated visitors who are
going through long-distance BushCo callousness, but we can
prevent other villages, towns, countries from experiencing
the same fate with the exposure of what is happening here.
We are in this together. Making the sacrifices of the
villagers count for justice is as important as making US
troops and the Iraqi civilians' sacrifices count for peace.
Peace and justice are two values that are intertwined and
interconnected, and they are the responsibility of us
all.

What can we do stateside to help these people? We
can lobby our Congressional representatives to hold hearings
into the tragedy of Daechuri. We can donate money to help
the villagers get fuel for heating their homes during the
bitter Korean winter and to obtain food, since they can't
access their fields for harvest. We can turn off our TVs and
educate ourselves on US corporatism, imperialism and
militarism by reading such books as Confessions of an
Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins, or Hegemony or Survival,
by Noam Chomsky. We can do with less, especially in the
season of over-the-top consumerism and waste. We can support
organizations financially who work for peace and justice in
lieu of a seemingly obscene overabundance of presents or
decorations.

I hope when Americans play golf on the
golf course that will be constructed over the rice fields
that sustained and gave sustenance to the villagers for
generations, they will stop and reflect for even a brief
moment that an entire village was destroyed and hundreds of
people were displaced for their recreation.

Golf! A
village was obliterated for golf. If this is the "American
way," then we obviously need a new way, as speedily as
possible.

ScoopPro is a new offering aimed at ensuring professional users get the most out of Scoop and support us to continue improving it so that Scoop continues to exist as a public service for all New Zealanders. More>>